The Islamophobic Perussuomalaiset (PS)* have been quick to point out how much migrants (all?!) are an economic burden to Finland. A new study by Citigroup claims that ethnic inequality and inequity have cost the US a staggering $16 trillion!
While parties like the PS and other ones who follow their racist tune believe that social exclusion and racism are cheap, they should think twice.
“Racial inequality has always had an outsized cost, one that was thought to be paid only by underrepresented groups,” said Citigroup Banking Chair Raymond McGuire in a statement. “What this report underscores is that this tariff is levied on us all.”
The high cost of racism is not only maintained institutionally but through outright lies. One of these is by the PS that talks about migration as one whole when they mean Muslims and people of color.
According to the Finnish Immigration Service, the vast majority (73.3%) of migrants came in 2019 for the following reasons: work (40.8%), family (21.5%), and as students (11%). Asylum seekers and refugees accounted for 7.8%. Source e: Twitter (Maria Ohisalo)
If racism has cost the US trillions of dollars, how much do you think it has cost Finland?
Rasismin vastustaminen ja maahanmuuttajavähemmistöjen puolustaminen tuntuu käytännön tasolla jäävän kansalaisten ja järjestöjen tehtäväksi.
Perussuomalaisten noustua suurella rasistijoukkiolla eduskuntaan vuonna 2011 kansalaisyhteiskunta heräsi. Lukemattomat netti- ja reaalimaailman yhteisöt nostavat esiin yhteiskuntamme ikävää lieveilmiötä ja yrittävät keksiä, kuinka rasismia vähennetään ja kuinka saadaan ihmiset luopumaan syrjivistä asenteistaan.
On vaikea sanoa, olemmeko loppujen lopuksi saaneet paljonkaan aikaisiksi, mutta ainakin olemme voimaannuttaneet toisiamme. Yhä useampi kansalainen uskaltaa nousta vastustamaan rasismia ja sanoa sanottavansa nettikeskusteluissa – ehkäpä naamatustenkin. Se on kuitenkin vain alku.
Rasismi ei vähene, jos sen lisäämistä johdetaan Suomen eduskunnasta. Eivät kansanedustajat ja kunnanvaltuutetutkaan taida arjessa juuri puuttua poliitikkotovereiden rasismiin. Tai eduskunnan puhemiehet – pysäyttävätkö he riittävän napakasti rasistisen puheen eduskunnan istunnoissa?
Jos puuttumattomuus johtuu pelosta, tilanne alkaa olla jo vaarallinen demokratian kannalta ja asiaan olisi tartuttava nopeasti. Jos taas on kysymys siitä, että halutaan pikkuisen sallia kansanryhmää vastaan kiihottamista, olisi demokratian säilymistä kannattavan osan kansanedustajista noustava esiin ja painokkaasti tuotava esille se seikka, että rasismia ei Suomen eduskunnassa harjoiteta. Mutta turha taitaa tällainen toive olla, valitsevathan puolueet yhteistuumin, lähes ilman soraääniä, jokaisen uuden vaalikauden aluksi ainakin yhden julkirasistisen puhemiehen.
Eduskunnan puhemiehistö v. 2015. Sisäministeri Risikon peukutus äärioikeistolaiselle mielenosoitukselle Helsingissä 2017. Puhemies Maria Lohelan ennustus perussuomalaisen puolueen ratsastamisesta raiskausten turvin vaalimenestykseen vaaleissa 2019.
Usein tuottavat antirasisteiksikin ilmoittautuneet poliitikot pettymyksen kannattajilleen. Vain aniharva on uskaltanut (tai halunnut) asettua julkisesti tukemaan maahan saapuneita pakolaisia. Suuri joukko poliitikkojakin louskutti hätäänsä ja raivoansa Oulun raiskausten takia – ihan vain siksi, että tekijät eivät olleet supisuomalaisia.
One case in particular that took place in Teuva on June 6 is still under investigation, and there is no indication when those guilty will face charges. The case involves a Muslim insulted and chased by some townspeople forcing his car off the road into a ditch and assaulted.
If you speak to the victim, whose name is Fares A-O, there is an abundance of evidence that shows that one clear bias motive was his ethnic background.
Here is a simple forumula to determine a hate crime:
Bias motivators.
Tejuka, a Teuva newspaper, published in June a spread and an editorial about what happened to Fares.
Writes Tejuka: “…soon [the attackers] forced [Fares] on the ground and started to rough him up by hitting and kicking him. Someone held Fares in a chokehold while others continued to hit him. Fares could no longer breathe. Somebody yelled: ‘Kill that mamu (a derogatory term for migrant)!”
Fares ended up taken to the Seinjäjoki and later to the hospital in Vaasa where they conducted tests and treated his wounds.
The police state: “For now there is no information that points to a hate crime but we are not ruling out such a possibility.” No evidence of a hate crime? For one, check out the victim’s car. Source: Poliisi
While what happened in Teuva is a hate crime case, it is also one of the worse to come to public light this year.
Indeed, the police can give a million excuses why this particular case is taking such a long time to investigate. One of these could even be the Covid pandemic, but the police officer in charge of the investigation did not mention it as a reason.
It is clear that a person that goes through such a traumatic event wants justice to move swiftly as opposed to slowly. The incident happened in June, or five months ago.
Apart from dealing with one’s trauma of what happened, Fares said that one of the most challenging matters was the slow pace of the investigation.
“Immigration from Africa and the Middle East is harmful and becomes more harmful as their numbers grow.”
The quote by Perussuomalaiset (PS) chairperson Jussi Halla-aho in today’s session of parliament is an example of his disdain and hatred of people of color.The reason why he and his party victimize people in such a racist fashion is that migrants have little to no political power in Finland.
But they are actually weak, a facade, similar to baby teeth. A house of cards built on hot air.
One of Finland’s two PS MEPs in Brussels. A Trump supporter even in underwear. Source: Twitter.
It looks like the PS are going to suffer a significant setback on November 3 if US President Donald Trump loses the election.
Parties like the PS have copied and pasted Trump, which partly explains why they pour on their racism in the way they do. Today’s parliamentary session is a prime example.
The PS are the most ungrateful party that I know. They label and kick migrants, especially Muslims and blacks, who in turn give them an opportunistic chance to gain political power.
The copy-cat PS uses the slogan from Brexit, “Take back Finland.” But they should know that we, the good people of Finland who don’t fall for their xenophobic baloney, are going to take back this country.
All of the hatred and lies they spread will not be forgotten.
I, for one, have pledged to fight them and all the other racist and toxic forces until my last breath.
Many, if not most migrants who have moved to Finland, have heard the following claim: Learn the language, and presto you are integrated.
While learning the language of your new homeland helps, it is only one of many things that will help you adapt to society.
Finland’s integration policy is similar to Sleeping Beauty. It is waiting for a handsome white prince (a super migrant, perhaps?) to kiss and wake her up. When that happens, our problems will vanish and we will live happily ever after. Source: Disney.,
Erna Bödström’s dissertation, “Welcome to Fantasy Finland,” points out a lot of facts why Finland’s official integration process is selective and exclusive.
Apart from painting a rosy picture of white Finnish society where visible migrants are sometimes doing menial work, integration does not promote interaction between white Finns and migrants and visible minorities.
Another observation that Bödström makes is that there is nothing in the integration brochures about racism and how difficult it is to find work.
Bödström sees integration as a process where the newly arrived resident becomes familiar with the social services and entering the labor market.
Some politicians, as we saw during the hysterical reaction of the Oulu sexual assault cases, claimed outright that Finland’s integration program has failed.
Failed?
True.
The integration program is, in many respects, a tool used by the state to show off its exceptionalism and society’s best side. Another role it appears to have is to exclude newcomers and minorities from gaining social and political power.
Who can forget the 10-year-old girl allegedly bullied and physically attacked in a Northern Espoo school by her classmate(s) for wearing a hijab? When the incident occurred, the police quickly denied that racism was a factor in the bullying.
Considering that too often the police months, if not years, to resolve racism cases, in the particular case of the Muslim girl the police stated three days after the incident “that no such motives have come up in the investigation by the police.”
When it comes t racism and discrimination cases, due process in Finland has different actions, priorities, and timelines.
Picture of the bullied child posted on Instagram by her brother. The posting states: “What do they teach [children] at Finnish homes? That Muslims are terrorists? The little girl [in the picture above] is spending a normal day at school when four boys [classmates] tried to rip off her hijab from her head and kicked her unconscious. We are not talking now about a migrant but about a victim. @iltalehti [tabloid] I want you to write out loud that racism must stop once for all, this girl is an angel!”
The recent case of a white Finnish boy bullied in Vantaa, and whose case has received a lot of public attention, there is a vibrant ongoing debate about bullying at schools. A good letter to the editor was published Saturday by Helsingin Sanomat.
Rasismi ei vain ole ihonvärin erottelua. Rasismi on minulle turhanpäiväistä syrjintää. Syrjiä jotakuta sellaisen asian takia, mihin kukaan ei voinut vaikuttaa. Syrjintä joka voi johtaa itsemurhaan!
Se kun jotakuta kiusataan vain, koska hän on musta. Kun joku ei saa töitä vain ja ainoastaan, koska hän on musta. Kun on vaikea saada asuntoa vain ja ainoastaan, koska hän on musta. Sellainen syrjintä voi johtaa masennukseen tai jopa itsemurhaan.
Josue Tumayine
Mustia tapetaan vain ja ainoastaan, koska he ovat mustia! Miksi?! Kukaan ei syntynyt ja päättänyt “oh haluanpa olla musta”. Joten miksi, miksi tuomitset minut sellaisesta, josta en voinut päättää? Minä en ole tehnyt sinulle mitään, en edes tunne sinua etkä sinäkään minua.
Okei joo mustat tekevät rikoksia, Mutta eivätkö muka valkoiset? Kun yksi musta tekee rikosta niin sen on hän, joka sen teki, ei kaikki mustat. Kuten sanotte “kun yksi valkoinen tekee rikoksen, niin sen on yksilöllinen teko. Ei kaikkien valkoisten tarvii siitä kärsiä”. Sama pätee mustiin!
Last year in Jämsä, an accompanied white Finn threatened an asylum seeker with a knife. Even if the asylum seeker does not speak Finnish well enough, he did make out the following words: vitun pakolainen (f**king asylum seeker) and vitun ulkomaalainen (f**king foreigner).
The police did not mention the last two insults to the asylum seeker in its investigation.
For this reason, the police report to the West Finland prosecutor is only charging two men in the case with an unlawful threat (laiton uhkaus). What happened isn’t a hate crime,* according to the police.
A hate crime is always accompanied by a bias indicator that can be: comments, victim perception, organized hate groups, pattern, intense violence and specific targeting, no other obvious motive, timing, and differences between the crime and the perpetrator(s). Source: Facing Facts.
It would be interesting to ask the police officer in charge of the case why bias motivation was not considered.
Getting justice in a hate crime case is sometimes something better said than done in Finland.
*The Criminal Code of Finland does not recognize the term “hate crime.” Section 5 states that a basis for increasing punishment (564/2015) is if the “offense for a motive based on race, skin color, birth status, national or ethnic origin, religion or belief, sexual orientation or disability or another corresponding grounds.”
It’s been close to five months after Keyse Abdifatah Maalesh, 18, lost his life at the Kannelmäki train station of Helsinki on April 26 when he was stabbed by a white Finn. Over two weeks ago on September 7, the suspect was handed a five-year prison sentence for involuntary manslaughter.
Ilhan Jama is the mother of the deceased Keyse. She said that she and her husband are not happy with the sentence, which she believes was a hate crime.
Keyse Abdifatah Maalesh was stabbed and killed on April 26 at the Kanneläki train station of Helsinki. The police did not consider the death a hate crime.
“The prosecutor tried to get a hate crime pinned on the suspect,” she said. “The person [who stabbed my son] alleged that he was scared by my son’s presence, or that a dark-skinned person was walking towards him down the stairs.”
Jama considers the excuse for stabbing her son quite incredible. She said that the stabber and his friend were both intoxicated, according to Jama.
Helsingin Sanomat finally published an editorial about the Pekka Kataja case and the threat of far-right violence to our political system. While the editorial was long overdue due to the importance of the topic, why did it take Finland’s largest daily a week to form an opinion on its editorial page?
The fact that a former member of Finland’s largest opposition party, the Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, is an attempted murder suspect and a far-right activist raises a lot of questions and concerns.
While the editorial raised some critical points, one wonders why it took so long for Helsingin Sanomat to take a stand on its editorial page. Why is the editorial behind a paywall? Isn’t this a topic of national interest?
Isn’t the topic important in today’s context? Isn’t the rise of a radical right party with numerous bedfellows with the far-right, neo-Nazi-spirited groups like the Soldiers of Odin and Kansallismielisten liitoutuma as threat?
If Finland’s democratic institutions suffered in the future a blow like those under Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, would Helsingin Sanomat take a week to form an opinion?
There is a reason why the Finnish media and the political establishment too often drags its heels when it comes to Islamophobia and the spread of far-right ideology.
One factor is the lack of leadership and naivety of our media and politicians. They have been the fuel why parties like the PS have grown during the past decade.
The rise of a party that spreads racism wholesale against groups like Muslims spreads ethnonationslist jibberish, has ties with anti-democratic and far-right groups is a threat exists because it appeals to a certain group of voters.
While the Helsingin Sanomat editorial correctly states that some threats like racism, hatred as well as political violence threaten to close the door on future government talks, I would not be too sure.
Finland’s treatment of the PS and its racism and nationalism resembles a small village. We all know and trust each other because we are all white.
Helsingin Sanomat’s staff celebrating the daily’s 130th anniversary in November 2019. Do you see any minorities? Only one person in the picture has a so-called foreign-sounding name. Source: Helsingin Sanomat.
A good start to change matters is to have more minority representation on Helsingin Sanomat the editorial board. It is highly revealing that Finland’s largest-circulating daily has few if any minorities on its editorial board considering that about 16% of Helsinki residents speak another mother tongue than Finnish or Swedish.
